No thank you. A God that would demand the sacrifice of the intellect or even the crucifixion of the intellect is not a God worthy of worship. Imagine moving at death from the shadow lands of this life into the divine presence only to find that God is nothing but irrational power personified, the apotheosis of arbitrarity. What could be more horrible? Far, far better would be to be annihlated at death.
Category: God
Is Divine Simplicity Consistent With Contingent Divine Knowledge?
The day before yesterday, I sketched the problem mentioned in the title. Today I offer a more rigorous presentation of the problem and examine a solution. The problem can be set forth as an aporetic triad:
1. Every free agent is a libertarianly-free (L-free) agent.
2. God is ontologically simple (where simplicity is an entailment of aseity and vice versa).
3. There are contingent items of divine knowledge that do not depend on divine creation, but do depend on creaturely freedom.
Each limb of the above triad has a strong, though not irresistible, claim on a classical theist's acceptance. As for (1), if God is L-free, as he must be on classical theism, then it is reasonable to maintain that every free agent is L-free. For if 'could have done otherwise' is an essential ingredient in the analysis of 'Agent A freely performs action X,' then it is highly plausible to maintain that this is so whether the agent is God or Socrates. Otherwise, 'free' will mean something different in the two cases. As for (2), some reasons were given earlier for thinking that a theism that understands itself must uphold God's ontological simplicity inasmuch as it is implied by the divine aseity. An example of (3) is Oswald's shooting of Kennedy. The act was freely performed by Oswald, and the proposition that records it is a contingent truth known by God in his omniscience.
But although each of (1)-(3) is plausibly maintained and is typically maintained by theists who uphold the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS), they cannot all be true. Therein resides the problem. Any two limbs imply the negation of the third. Thus: (1) & (3) –> ~(2); (1) & (2) –> ~(3); (2) & (3) –> ~(1).
To illustrate, let us consider how (1) and (3), taken together, entail the negation of (2). Being omniscient, God knows that Oswald freely chose to kill Kennedy. But Oswald's L-freedom precludes us from saying that God's knowledge of this contingent fact depends solely on the divine will. For it also depends on Oswald's L-free authorship of his evil deed, an authorship that God cannot prevent or override once he has created L-free agents. But this is inconsistent with the divine aseity. For to say that God is a se is to say that God is not dependent on anything distinct from himself. But God has the the property of being such that he knows that Oswald freely chose to kill Kennedy, and his having this property depends on something outside of God's control, namely, Oswald's L-free choice. In this way the divine aseity is compromised, and with it the divine simplicity.
It seems, then, that our aporetic triad is an inconsistent triad. The problem it represents can be solved by denying either (1) or (2) or (3). Since (3) cannot be plausibly denied, this leaves (1) and (2). Some will deny the divine simplicity. But an upholder of the divine simplicity has the option of denying (1) and maintaining that, while God is L-free, creaturely agents are free only in a compatibilist sense. If creaturely agents are C-free, but not L-free, then Oswald could not have done otherwise, and it is possible for the upholder of divine simplicity to say that that Oswald's C-free choice is no more a threat to the divine aseity than the fact that God knows the contingent truth that creaturely agents exist. The latter is not a threat to the divine aseity because the existence of creaturely agents derives from God in a way that Oswald's L-free choice does not derive from God.
See Jeffrey E. Brower, Simplicity and Aseity, for this sort of solution. I cannot see that the solution is entirely satisfactory, but it is worth considering.
The Aporetics of Divine Simplicity
Thomist27 e-mails:
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Thank you first of all for a spectacular blog. I discovered Maverick Philosopher a few years ago and have been reading it regularly ever since. Through your blog, I learned that you wrote the SEP's article on divine simplicity, among similar things; I think, then, that you are qualified to answer my questions. My questions concern divine simplicity and divine knowledge, two nuts that I've lately been making every effort to crack. First, do you think that theism can be salvaged without absolute divine simplicity? I know that there are many theists who don't believe that God is simple, but is such a concept of Deity coherent? I believe a case can be made, pace Alvin Plantinga and other theistic deniers of divine simplicity, that to deny the absolute ontological simplicity of God is to deny theism itself. For what we mean by 'God' is an absolute reality, something metaphysically ultimate, "that than which no greater can be conceived." (Anselm) Now an absolute reality cannot depend for its existence or nature or value upon anything distinct from itself. It must be from itself alone, or a se. Nothing could count as divine, or worthy of worship, or be an object of our ultimate concern, or be maximally great, if it lacked the property of aseity. But the divine aseity, once it is granted, seems straightaway to entail the divine simplicity, as Aquinas argues in ST. For if God is not dependent on anything else for his existence, nature, and value, then God is not a whole of parts, for a whole of parts depends on its parts to be and to be what it is. So if God is a se, then he is not a composite being, but a simple being. This implies that in God there is no real distinction between: existence and essence, form and matter, act and potency, individual and attribute, attribute and attribute. In sum, if God is God, then God is simple. To deny the simplicity of God is to deny the existence of God. It is therefore possible for an atheist to argue: Nothing can be ontologically simple, therefore, God cannot exist. A theist who denies divine simplicity might conceivably be taxed with idolatry inasmuch as he sets up something as God that falls short of the exacting requirements of deity. The divine transcendence would seem to require that God cannot be a being among beings, but must in some sense be Being itself . (Deus est ipsum esse subsistens: God is not an existent but self-subsisting Existence itself.) On the other hand, a theist who affirms divine simplicity can be taxed, and has been taxed, with incoherence. As an aporetician first and foremost, I seek to lay bare the problem in all its complexity under suspension of the natural urge for a quick solution.
This is indeed a problem. On classical theism, God is libertarianly free: although he exists in every metaphysically possible world, he does not create in every such world, and he creates different things in the different worlds in which he does create. Thus the following are accidental properties of God: the property of creating something-or-other, and the property of creating human beings. But surely God cannot be identical to these properties as the simplicity doctrine seems to require. It cannot be inscribed into the very nature of God that he create Socrates given that he freely creates Socrates. Some writers have attempted to solve this problem, but I don't know of a good solution. Well, this too is a problem. If S knows that p, and p is contingent, then S's knowing that p is an accidental (as opposed to essential) property of S. Now if God is omniscient, then he knows every (non-indexical) truth, including every contingent truth. It seems to follow that God has at least as many accidental properties as there are contingent truths. Surely these are not properties with which God could be identical, as the simplicity doctrine seems to require. Now there must be some contingent truths in consequence of the divine freedom; but this is hard to square with the divine simplicity. And if it is in fact the case that God's knowledge is the cause of things, then how are we to understand His knowledge of the free actions of creatures? I know that God is supposed to be the final cause of these actions, as well as their ultimate efficient cause, but the issue is still unclear to me. This is also a problem. The simplicity doctrine implies that God is identical to what he knows. It follows that what he knows cannot vary from world to world. In the actual world A, Oswald shoots Kennedy at time t. If that was a libertarianly free action, then there is a world W in which Oswald does not shoot Kennedy at t. Since God exists in very world, and knows what happens in every world, he knows that in A, Oswald shoots Kennedy at t and in W that Oswald does not shoot Kennedy at t. But this contradicts the simplicity doctrine, according to which what God knows does not vary from world to world. The simplicity doctrine thus appears to collide both with divine and human freedom. I sincerely look forward to your addressing these questions. Thank you in advance for your consideration of these weighty matters. I have addressed them, but not solved them. Solutions have been proffered, but they give rise to problems of their own — something to be pursued in future posts. |
God, Gratitude, and Gladness
Jim Ryan of Philosoblog posts infrequently, but always interestingly. Ryan is both a conservative and an atheist. Being a conservative, he appreciates the importance of gratitude. Being an atheist, he sees no reason to take gratitude and its importance as supportive of theistic belief. Herewith, some commentary on his post A New Error Theory for Theism.
1. Gratitude and human flourishing. Ryan rightly suspects a connection between gratitude and human flourishing: "The ordering of attitudes and dispositions in the soul is dysfunctional if at or near the center of these there is no deep gratitude, by which I mean gratitude that this world exists and that one lives in it." I believe this is a genuine insight.
2. The nature of gratitude. Let us first note that gratitude exhibits a triadic structure. To feel grateful is for someone X to feel grateful to someone Y for something or someone Z. If I receive a gift, I am grateful to the donor for the gift. 'To whom?' and 'For what?' are both questions it is appropriate to ask in ordinary cases of gratitude. And as the grammar of 'To whom?' suggests, the donor must be a person. I cannot be grateful to a vending machine for disgorging a can of Pepsi upon the insertion of a few coins. Here too we have a triadic relation: the machine gave me a can of soda. But I cannot be grateful to a machine, though I could perhaps be grateful to its installer or manufacturer or inventor. It would be a case of incorrect or inappropriate emotion were one to feel grateful to a vending machine. I hold, with Brentano, that one can distinguish between correct and incorrect emotion.
Note also that what one is grateful for, the gift, must be gratuitously given. I can be appropriately grateful only for that which is freely given, which implies that the donor is both a free agent and an uncoerced free agent. If Robin Hood forces you to give me your money, I cannot be appropriately grateful to you, though I may be to Robin Hood. For there to be gratitude, there must be a donor, and it is necessary that the donor be a person; but it is not sufficient that the donor be a person: the donor's donation must be a free act.
3. Can one be grateful to a not presently existing donor? If I am grateful to a person P at time t does it follow that P exists at t? Or can one appropriately feel gratitude only to persons who presently exist? Suppose someone likes what I write and mails me a check as a gift for my blogging endeavours. Unbeknownst to me, the donor dies before I receive the check. I am grateful to him for the check even though at the time of receiving the check and feeling the gratitude he no longer exists. This suggests that gratitude to a person P does not entail the present existence of P. And certainly it does seem that gratitude to past persons is appropriately felt. A child, student, philosopher might appropriately feel gratitude in respect of his deceased parents, teachers, predecessors. If one feels grateful to a person surely the gratitude does not end when the person does. My gratitude to you can survive your death though it cannot survive mine. (I am assuming for the moment that we are not immortal souls.)
4. Gratitude to a never existing donor? Can one appropriately feel grateful to a nonexistent person? A child, for example, feels grateful to Santa Claus for her Christmas presents. This looks to be a genuine case of gratitude despite the nonexistence of the person to whom the child feels grateful. But note that for the child the existence of Santa Claus is an epistemic possibility. If the child were convinced of the nonexistence of the fat guy, then she couldn't feel grateful to him. Note also that the triadic structure is preserved. The girl is grateful to Santa Claus for her presents despite his nonexistence. If a theist is grateful to God for his existence, his gratitude is what it is whether or not God exists. But a person who disbelieves in God cannot be grateful to God.
5. Must the relata of a relation all of them exist? #4 points up a fiendishly difficult philosophical question that turns up in many different contexts: Can a relation obtain if one or more of its relata do not exist? #3 points up the same problem on the assumption of presentism, the doctrine that (the contents of) the present alone exist, that past and furture items to do not exist.
6. Metaphysical gratitude. What Jim Ryan is talking about, however, is not ordinary gratitude — gratitude to some intramundane person for some intramundane object — but what we might call metaphysical gratitude or what he calls "deep gratitude": gratitude for the existence of the world and our lives within it. Now if this is a genuine case of gratitude, it seems appropriate to ask to whom we feel grateful. This person can only be God, as Ryan realizes, since only God could bestow the gift of the world's existence. So it would seem that a metaphysically grateful person is grateful to God. A theist might try to argue from gratitude to God as follows:
a. We are appropriately grateful for the existence of the world
b. To be grateful is to be grateful to someone
c. The only person to whom one can be appropriately grateful for the
existence of the world is God
—–
d. God exists.
7. Ryan's rejection of this argument. Ryan will of course reject this argument by rejecting premise (b). He maintains:
P: There is no entailment from the proposition that one feels gratitude to the proposition that there is someone to whom one feels gratitude.
That could be read, not as a denial of the triadic structure of gratitude, but as saying that, from the mere fact that one feels grateful, it does not follow that the person to whom one feels grateful exists. (Compare the Santa Claus example above. The child is grateful to someone, namely, Santa Claus; but it does not follow that Santa Claus exists. Or consider the situation in which presentism is true and one is grateful to a dead parent. One would then be grateful to a nonexistent donor.) So from the mere fact that one feels grateful for the existence of the world, it does not follow that God exists, even in the presence of the auxiliary premises that gratitude is by its very nature gratitude to a person, and the only possible donor of the world is God.
This seems right and refutes the (a)-(d) argument. But it raises an interesting question. Suppose the following: subject S is grateful for some object O; O can only be the gift of some person P and S knows
this to be the case; S either knows or else is subjectively certain that P does not exist. Are these suppositions consistent? Can I be grateful to a person I am subjectively certain does not exist? Ryan is subjectively certain that God does not exist. How then can he feel grateful for the existence of the world given that he knows that gratitude is by its very nature gratitude to a person and that in the
present case the person can only be God?
8. Gratitude and Gladness. I say that Ryan cannot be grateful that the world exists given his atheism. For if he is grateful, he is grateful to someone, and this someone can only be God given that the object of the gratitude is the existence of the world. I grant that gratitude for the existence of the world does not prove the existence of God. But the gratitude to be gratitude must allow the existence of God: the existence of God must be epistemically possible for the subject of gratitude. But Ryan's 'gratitude' is blended with subjective certainty of God's nonexistence: the existence of God is not an epistemic possibility for Ryan. So I say that what Ryan feels is not gratitude. Ryan concludes,
Atheists can feel deep gratitude, as well, however. When we construe the emotion as deep gladness and modesty, the personal object (God) drops out. One is simply glad that this universe exists and that one lives in it. There need be no one to whom one is grateful. So, the error theory doesn't cast any aspersions on deep gratitude. It is perfectly consistent with holding, as I do, that deep gratitude is indeed part of proper functioning for human beings.
I deny that atheists can feel deep (metaphysical) gratitude, gratitude for the very existence of the world and our lives in it. An atheist is one who explicitly denies the existence of God. For such a person it is not epistemically possible that there be a person to whom to be grateful for the existence of the world. Since the existence of God is a priori ruled out, what the atheist feels cannot be gratitude. Gratitude by its very nature is gratitude to a person. Granted, the existence of the person is not guaranteed by the presence of the emotion; but it can't be excluded by it either. It is incoherent to feel gratitude to a person one believes did not ever exist. Ryan can no more feel gratitude for the existence of the world than I can feel gratitude for Christmas presents whose existence could only be explained by Santa's having dropped them down my chimney.
An atheist can be glad that the world exists, but gladness is not gratitude.
The Question of the Reality of God: Wittgensteinian Fideism No Answer
Taking a Wittgensteinian line, D. Z. Phillips construes the question of the reality of God as like the question of the reality of physical objects in general, and unlike the question of the reality of any particular physical object such as a unicorn. Phillips would therefore have a bone to pick with Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey who writes,
Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?
Abbey's meaning is clear: It is as idle to suppose that there is a God as to suppose that there is an irate unicorn on the far side of the moon. Of course, there could be such a unicorn. It is logically possible in that there is no contradiction in the idea. It is also epistemically possible in that the supposition is consistent with what we know. (Perhaps a clever extraterrestrial scientist synthesized a unicorn, put him in a space suit, and deposited the unfortunate critter on the moon.) But there is no positive reason to believe in something so outlandish. The same goes for God according to Abbey, Russell, and plenty of others. Such theists think of God as just one more being among beings, as something in addition to all the other things that exist.
How might a theist respond to this puerile conception? (And to such cognate 'objections' as Russell's Teapot? ) One way to respond is that of the Wittgensteinian fideist. A fideist like Phillips would take Abbey to have misconstrued the very sense of the theist's affirmation. Abbey takes the theist to be adding a weird object to the ontological inventory: hence the comparison of God to an irate lunar unicorn. Phillips, however, clearly sees that this is a mistake. His positive theory, however, is just as bad. Phillips thinks that the claim that God exists is more like the claim that there are physical objects in general. That there are physical objects in general is presupposed by any inquiry into whether a particular physical object exists. It is a presupposition without which such an inquiry would make no sense. As Phillips puts it:
Similarly, the question of the reality of God is a question of the possibility of sense and nonsense, truth and falsity, in religion. When God's existence is construed as a matter of fact, it is taken for granted that the concept of God is at home within the conceptual framework of the reality of the physical world. . . . to ask a question about the reality of God is to ask a question about a kind of reality, not about the reality of this or that, in much the same way as asking a question about the reality of physical objects is not to ask about the reality of this or that physical object. ("Philosophy, Theology, and the Reality of God," Phil. Quart., 1963, reprinted in Rowe and Wainwright, p. 281)
Phillips blunders badly in this passage when he says that construing the divine existence as a matter of fact takes it for granted that the concept of God belongs within the conceptual framework of the reality of the physical world. For if anything is clear, it is that God for the theist is not a physical object. Surely, in claiming that God exists as a matter of fact, the theist who understands his doctrine is not claiming that God exists as a physical object. What Phillips should have said is that construing God's existence as a matter of fact presupposes, not that God is a physical object, but that God is a being or an existent.
Phillips would want to deny that too. His view is that the reality of God is not the reality of a special being, but the reality of a presupposition that is not and cannot be questioned from within a religious language-game (or at least from within a theistic religious language-game). The reality of God has to do with what a religious believer is prepared to say: ". . . the religious believer is not prepared to say that God might not exist. It is not that as a matter of fact God will always exist, but that it makes no sense to say that God might not exist." (280)
Perhaps the following analogy will clarify what Phillips is driving at. Consider the reality of checkmate in chess. The existence of checkmate is not a matter of fact in the way that it is a matter of fact that Karpov opened a certain game with 1. d4. For within the game of chess it makes no sense to say that checkmate might not exist. Checkmate and the rules governing it are defining features of the game. They cannot be questioned from within the game, and to question them from without the game is simply to reject the game. For that reason, it makes no sense to demand proof of these rules, nor can one raise the question whether they are reasonable. Is it reasonable that one cannot castle out of check, into check, or though check? It is neither reasonable nor unreasonable. The question of reasonableness cannot arise. Similarly, for Phillips, it is neither reasonable nor unreasonable that God exists. To play a theistic language-game is to presupposes the meaningfulness of God-talk just as to play chess is to presuppose the meaningfulness of talk of checkmate. And just as God exists in theistic language-games, checkmate exists in chess. But also: just as checkmate does not exist outside chess, God does not exist outself theistic language-games. For if God does exist apart from theistic language-games, then there would be a fact of that matter as to the existence of God.
At this point one can see what is wrong with Phillips' view. Every sane person is an anti-realist about checkmate, but to be an anti-realist about God, as Phillips' view seems to require, is to make a joke of theistic belief. Phillips' claim that "theology is the grammar of discourse" (282) is therefore as preposterous as the claim that botany is the grammar of discourse about plants. There is of course a sense in which for the theist the existence of God is necessary, but this is not the sense in which a rule is necessary for a language-game. Chess is not chess without checkmate, so checkmate is necessary within chess. God, however, is not a rule, nor a linguistic presupposition, nor concept, nor anything dependent on human talking and acting. So the necessity of God is not the necessity of a rule. God is a necessary being, which implies that he is a being, which implies that he exsts independently of human talk and speech if he exists at all. God cannot be reduced to God-talk and God-ritual. Chess just is chess-talk and chess-ritual: chess has no reality outside chess conventions and the chessic form of life. Not so with God.
These points are frightfully obvious, but one can understand why Phillips was driven to contravene them. Surely God is not a physical object, and it is arguable that he is not a being among beings. What then is God, and how understand his reality? His is not the reality of any sort of abstract object, nor that of any sort of collection; thus he is not the world-whole. So Phillips is driven to say something equally untenable, namely, that God is immanent to certain language-games, as a sort of framework truth of those language-games.
The question of the reality of God is a hard nut to crack, but surely it won't do to say that the reality of God is a matter of talk and practice, as if God were merely a feature of certain language games and forms of life. If God exists, then he is a reality transcendent of any Sprachspiel or Lebensform.
God and Evil, Mind and Matter
It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both true, then they are logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be consistent. This is so whether or not anyone is in a position to explain how it is possible that they be consistent. If something is the case, then, by the time-honored principle ab esse ad posse valet illatio, it is possible that it be the case, and my inability, or anyone's inability, to explain how it is possible that such-and-such be the case cannot count as a good reason for thinking that it is not the case. So if it is the case that God exists and Evil exists are logically consistent, then this is possibly the case, and a theist's inability to explain how God and evil can coexist is not a good reason for him to abandon his theism — or his belief in the existence of objective evil.
The logical point I have just made is rock-solid. I now apply it to two disparate subject-matters. The one is the well-known problem of evil faced by theists. The other is the equally well-known 'problem of mind' that materialists face, namely, the problem of reconciling the existence of the phenomena of mind with the belief that nothing concrete is immaterial.
The theist is rationally entitled to stand pat in the face of the 'problem of evil' and point to his array of arguments for the existence of God whose cumulative force renders rational his belief that God exists. Of course, he should try to answer the atheist who urges the inconsistency of God exists and Evil exists; but his failure to provide a satisfactory answer is not a reason for him to abandon his theism. A defensible attitude would be: "This is something we theists need to work on."
Atheists and naturalists ought not object to this standing pat since they do the same. What materialist about the mind abandons his materialism in the face of the various arguments (from intentionality, from qualia, from the unity of consciousness, from the psychological relevance of logical laws, etc.) that we anti-materialists marshall? Does the materialist give in? Hell no, he stands pat, pointing to his array of arguments and considerations in favor of materialism, and when you try to budge him with the irreconcilability of intentionality and materialism, or qualia and materialism, or whatever, he replies, "This is something we materialists need to work on."
Some Questions About the Trinity Distinguished
It may help to distinguish the following questions.
1. Is there a clear scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Trinity?
2. Is the doctrine, as formulated in the Athanasian creed and related canonical documents, true?
3. Is it possible for human reason, unaided by divine revelation, to know the doctrine to be true?
4. Is the doctrine of the Trinity possibly true?
5. Is the doctrine thinkable (conceivable) without contradiction?
I have little to say about the exegetical (1) since it is beyond my competence as a philosopher. I cannot pronounce upon (2), either for or against, until I have decided (4) and (5). The same goes for the epistemological question, (3). My present interest is in (4) and (5), which are logically prior to the first three, with (5) being logically prior to (4).
(4) and (5) are distinct questions. An affirmative answer to (5) does not entail an affirmative answer to (4). This is because conceivability is no sure guide to real (extramental) possibility. Of the two questions, (5) comes first in the order of inquiry: if we cannot think the Trinity without contradiction, how could we advance to the further question of whether it is really possible?
(5) is the question at the center of my interest.
It is difficult to get some people to appreciate the force and importance of (5) because they are dogmatists who accept the Trinity doctrine as true simply because they were brought up to believe it, or because it is something their church teaches. Since they accept it as true, no question of its logical coherence arises for them. And so they think that anyone who questions the doctrine must not understand it. To 'set the objector straight' they then repeat the very verbal formulas the logical coherence of which is in question. "What's the problem? There is one God in three divine Persons!" They think that if they only repeat the formulas often enough, then the objector will 'get it.' But it is they who do not get it, since they do not understand the logical problems to which the doctrinal formulations give rise.
Or the adherent may think that the objector is merely 'attacking' or polemicizing against his faith; it doesn't occur to the adherent that there are people whose love of truth is so strong that they will not accept claims without examination. Now if one examines the creedal formulations, one will see that the gist of the Trinity doctrine is as follows:
1. Monotheism: There is exactly one God.
2. Divinity of Persons: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God.
3. Distinctness of Persons: The Father is not the Son; and the Holy Ghost is not the Father or the Son.
The problem is to show how these propositions are logically consistent, that is, how they can all be true, but without falling into heresy. If you cannot see the problem, you are not paying attention, or you lack intelligence, or your thought-processes are being distorted by ideological commitments. Whatever you think of Brower and Rea's solution to the problem, their exposition of it is very clear and I recommend it to you. My reason for not accepting their solution is here.
Does Trinity Entail Quaternity?
Christianity, like the other two Abrahamic religions, is monotheistic. But unlike Judaism and Islam, Christianity holds to a trinitarian conception of God. The idea, spelled out in the Athanasian Creed, is that there is one God in three divine Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Each person is God, and yet there is exactly one God, despite the fact that the Persons are distinct from one another. How is this possible? How can Christians convince Jews and Muslims that their position is logically tenable and does not collapse into tritheism, and thus into polytheism to the detriment of the divine unity and transcendence?
Here is one problem. God is said to be tripersonal: the one God somehow includes three numerically distinct Persons. But none of these Persons is tripersonal. The Father is not tripersonal. The Son is not tripersonal. The Holy Ghost is not tripersonal. Now if two things differ in a property, then they cannot be identical. (This is the irreproachable principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals expressed in its contrapositive form.) Now God and each of the Persons differs in point of tripersonality: God is tripersonal while no Person is tripersonal. It follows that God is not identical to the Father, nor to the Son, nor to the Holy Ghost. Therefore, God is not identical to any of the Persons, whence it follows that God is distinct from each of the three Persons. And if God is distinct from each of the Persons, then he is a Fourth.
Is God a divine person? If you say yes, then we are on our way to the Quaternity, the doctrine that there is one God in four divine Persons. For if God is not identical to the Father, or to the Son, or or to the Holy Ghost, each of which is a person, and God is a person, then there are four – count ‘em – four Persons.
Some doctrines in philosophy threaten to collapse into others. Thus mind-brain identity theory threatens to collapse into eliminativism about the mind. Other doctrines seem to want to expand. How do we keep the Trinity from expanding into the Quaternity? The attentive reader will have noticed that the argument can be iterated. If the Three-in-One becomes a Four-in-One, how avoid a Five-in-One, ad infinitum?
De Trinitate: The Statue/Lump Analogy and the ‘Is’ of Composition
Thanks to Bill Clinton, it is now widely appreciated that much rides on what the meaning of ‘is’ is. Time was, when only philosophers were aware of this. In our Trinitarian explorations with the help of our Jewish atheist friend Peter we have discussed the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication. We saw that ‘The Father is God’ could be construed as
1. The Father is identical to God
or as
2. The Father is divine.
Both construals left us with logical trouble. If each of the Persons is identical to God, and there is exactly one God, then (given the transitivity and symmetry of identity) there is exactly one Person. On the other hand, if each of the Persons is divine, where ‘is’ functions as copula, then tri-theism is the upshot. Either way, we end up contradicting a central Trinitarian tenet.
But there is also the ‘is’ of composition as when we say, ‘This countertop is marble,’ or in my house, ‘This countertop is faux marble.’ ‘Is’ here is elliptical for ‘is composed of.’ Compare: ‘That jacket is leather,’ and ‘This beverage is whisky.’ To say that a jacket is leather is not to say that it is identical to leather – otherwise it would be an extremely large jacket – or that it has leather as a property: leather is not a property. A jacket is leather by being made out of leather.
Suppose you have a statue S made out for some lump L of material, whether marble, bronze, clay, or whatever. How is S related to L? It seems clear that L can exist without S existing. Thus one could melt the bronze down, or re-shape the clay. In either case, the statue would cease to exist, while the quantity of matter would continue to exist. It follows that S is not identical to L. They are not identical because something is true of L that is not true of S: it is true of L that it can exist without S existing, but it is not true of S that it can exist without S existing. I am assuming the following principle, one that seems utterly beyond reproach:
(InId) If x = y, whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa.
(This is a rough formulation of the Indiscenibility of Identicals. A more careful formulation would block such apparent counterexamples as: Maynard G. Krebs believes that the morning star is a planet but does not believe that the evening star is a planet.)
Returning to the statue and the lump, although S is not identical to L, S is not wholly distinct, or wholly diverse, from L either. This is because S cannot exist unless L exists. This suggests the following analogy: The Father is to God as the statue is to the lump of matter out of which it is sculpted. And the same goes for the other Persons. Schematically, P is to G as S to L. The Persons are like hylomorphic compounds where the hyle in question is the divine substance. Thus the Persons are not each identical to God, which would have the consequence that they are identical to one another. Nor are the persons instances of divinity which would entail tri-theism. It is rather than the persons are composed of God as of a common material substance. Thus we avoid a unitarianism in which there is no room for distinctness of Persons, and we avoid tri-theism. So far, so good.
Something like this approach is advocated by Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea, here.
But does the statue/lump analogy avoid the problems we faced with the water analogy? Aren’t the two analogies so closely analogous that they share the same problems? Liquid, solid, and gaseous are states of water. Similarly, a statue is a state of a lump of matter. Modalism is not avoided. If the Persons are like states, then they are not sufficiently independent. But a statue is even worse off than a state of water. Water can be in one of its states whether or not we exist. But a hunk of matter cannot be a statue unless beings like us are on the scene to interpret it as a statue. Thus my little ceramic bust of Beethoven represents Beethoven only because we take it as representing the great composer. In a world without minds, it would not represent anything. The Persons of the Trinity, however, are in no way dependent on us for their being Persons of the Trinity.
It might be counterargued that water is not to its states as lump to statue. Water must be in one of its three states, but a lump of bronze need not be in any statue-state. That is indeed a point of disanalogy between the two analogies. But notice that God and the Persons are necessarily related: God cannot exist without the Persons. A lump of bronze can exist without being a statue. In this respect, the water analogy is better: water must be in one its three states just as God must be composed of the three Persons.
Besides the threat of modalism, there is also the fact that God is not a substance in the sense in which clay and water are substances. Thus God is not a stuff or hyle, but a substance in the sense of a hypostasis or hypokeimenon. And it does no good to say that God is an immaterial or nonphysical stuff since what must be accommodated is the divine unity. The ground of divine unity cannot be matter whether physical or nonphysical. We saw that one and the same quantity of H20 cannot be simultaneously and throughout liquid, solid, and gaseous. Similarly, one and the same quantity of bronze cannot be simultaneously and throughout three different statues. Connected with this is how God could be a hylomorphic compound, or any sort of compound, given the divine simplicity which rules out all composition in God.
In sum, the statue/lump analogy is not better than the water/state analogy. Neither explains how we can secure both unity of the divine nature and distinctness of Persons.
Is The Doctrine of the Trinity Logically Coherent? (Peter Lupu)
In this installment, Peter Lupu, atheist, defends the logical coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity. My critical comments follow in blue.
It may be somewhat of an astonishment to those who know me well that I should venture to defend the doctrine of the Trinity. I am not a Christian; I am not religious; I am an atheist; and I have at least on one occasion privately expressed to Bill my reservations about the coherence of the Trinity doctrine. Nevertheless, there is a question here that deserves exploring. What is the question?
Continue reading “Is The Doctrine of the Trinity Logically Coherent? (Peter Lupu)”
Is There a ‘No God’ Delusion?
A certain popular writer speaks of a God delusion. This prompts the query whether there might be a 'No God' delusion. Is it perhaps the case that atheism is a delusion? Bruce Charlton, M. D. , returns an affirmative answer in Is Atheism Literally a Delusion? In this post I will try to understand his basic argument and see if I should accept it. The following is my reconstruction of the core of Charlton's argument:
Generic and Specific Problems of Evil
(A reader requested a post on evil. I am happy to oblige. The following has some relevance to the recent soul thread. So I'll leave the ComBox open in case Peter L. or others care to comment. As usual, the default setting for cyberpunk tolerance = 0.)
Suppose we define a 'generic theist' as one who affirms the existence of a bodiless person, a pure spirit, who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, and who in addition is perfectly free, the creator and sustainer of the universe, and the ground of moral obligation. This generic theism is common to the mainstream of the three Abrahamic religions. Most theists, however, are not 'generic' but adopt a specific form of theism. Christians, for example, add to the divine attributes listed above the attribute of being triune and others besides. Christianity also includes doctrines about the human being and his ultimate destiny in an afterlife. Generic theism is thus an abstraction from the concrete specific theisms that people accept and live.
J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (Part One)
(The following review will be crossposted shortly at Prosblogion. Comments are closed here, but will be open there.)
Apart from what Alvin Plantinga calls creative anti-realism, the two main philosophical options for many of us in the West are some version of naturalism and some version of Judeo-Christian theism. As its title indicates, J. P. Moreland’s The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009) supports the theistic position by way of a penetrating critique of naturalism and such associated doctrines as scientism. Moreland briefly discusses creative anti-realism in the guise of postmodernism on pp. 13-14, but I won’t report on that except to say that his arguments against it, albeit brief, are to my mind decisive. Section One of this review will present in some detail Moreland’s conception of naturalism and what it entails. Sections Two and Three will discuss his argument from consciousness for the existence of God. Section Four will ever so briefly report on the contents of the rest of the book. In Part Two of this review I hope to discuss Moreland’s critique of Thomas Nagel’s Dismissive Naturalism. Numbers in parentheses are page references. Words and phrases enclosed in double quotation marks are quotations from Moreland. Inverted commas are employed for mentioning and ‘scaring.’
Continue reading “J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (Part One)”
How to Avoid God
C. S. Lewis, "The Seeing Eye" in Christian Reflections (Eeerdmans, 1967), pp. 168-167:
Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you'd be safer to stick to the papers. You'll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.
Imago Dei
Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram . . . (Gen 1, 26) Let us make man in our image and likeness. . .
Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam. . . (Gen 1, 27) And God created man in his image. . .
I used to play chess with an old man by the name of Joe B., one of the last of the WWII Flying Tigers. Although he had been a working man all his life, he had an intellectual bent and liked to read. But like many an old man, he thought he knew all sorts of things that he didn’t know, and was not bashful about sharing his ‘knowledge.’ One day the talk got on to religion and the notion that man was created in the image and likeness of God. Old Joe had a long-standing animus against the Christianity of his youth, an animus probably connected with his equally long-standing hatred for his long-dead father.
Recalling some preacher’s invocation of the’ image and likeness’ theme, old Joe snorted derisively, "So God has a digestive tract!?" In Joe’s mind this triumphal query was supposed to bear the force of a refutation. Joe’s ‘reasoning’ was along these lines:
1. Man is made in God’s image.
2. Man is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.
Therefore
3. God is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.
But that’s like arguing:
1. This statue is made in Lincoln’s image.
2. This statue is composed of marble.
Therefore
3. Lincoln is composed of marble.